“Fuck me,” I said, keeping my tone even, clinical. “Thirty minutes should be sufficient—ten to prep, fifteen active, five to clean up.” I moved slightly, cataloging the data as I spoke. “My last blood panel is clear—full screen, recent, and I’m on PrEP because Doc suggested it. I brought lube and condoms, multiple types, in case of preference or failure. Towels are in the bathroom. Water’s on the nightstand. We can keep it contained.”
Did I say all that right?
I tried to read Caleb’s reaction and realized I didn’t have a framework for it. Is this what nervousness feels like? He stood so fast the chair scraped behind him, and he closed the distance in two steps and jabbed a finger into my chest.
“You can’t say things like that.”
I tracked the contact automatically—the pressure point, the angle of his wrist, the proximity. His tone was hard, but there was something else under it I couldn’t classify.
He poked me again, and I stepped back until my shoulders met the wall.
I craved his touch and I needed him so bad I could barely breathe. Not to mention he was the only man—the only person—who got to touch me like this and walk away from it.
“If there’s a preferred phrasing,” I said, “you can specify.”
Caleb shook his head, and then his hands came up, cradling my face with unexpected care. He brushed his thumbs along my cheekbones, over my jaw. He stared at me, searching, and when he spoke, his voice had softened, the edge gone. “Freak,” he said, quieter now, not an insult, not rejection—something warmer settling low and dangerous in my chest.
I froze. The contact held me in place in a way nothing else could. My focus narrowed to the drag of his thumbs, and the way he looked at me as if I was something he didn’t understand but wanted anyway. I could work with that. If that was the only way I could have him—through his hesitation—then I’d take it. I’d stay in his life and wear him down, the way I had with other outcomes, patient and deliberate. He’d get used to me being there. He’d learn to rely on it—on me—watching his back.
He glanced at the nearest screen where an upload crawled along and showed seven percent—important, probably—but his attention was back on me almost immediately.
“I have ninety-three percent,” he murmured, tilting his head as he moved closer. “I want to kiss you.”
The words hit harder than they should have. I swallowed, my throat tight. Kissing did something to me—cut my breath, stripped control in a way I didn’t understand and couldn’t predict. “I don’t?—”
He closed the distance and took the first kiss, and my heart kicked hard against my ribs as everything else narrowed to him.
“You taste good,” he murmured, and went in for another kiss, his tongue tangling with mine.
I’d never kissed anyone like this. I couldn’t breathe.
I jerked back. “I just want you to fuck me.”
He considered me for the longest time, his lips wet, his eyes narrowed.
“Kissing, taking my time, not being on a schedule, and rocking your fucking world is non-negotiable.”
This was the part I couldn’t map. He wanted me, but he wanted it softened, shaped into something I didn’t understand. Why complicate it? I could fake it. I knew how. But he’d asked for something real, and I didn’t know if I had that.
“Then show me,” I said quietly. “Because I don’t know how to do it your way.”
SEVENTEEN
Caleb
I took Novak’s hand.He was tense, but when I laced my fingers through his, he didn’t resist as I tugged him up two flights of wooden stairs to his room.
The stairs creaked under our weight—his boots heavy, my bare feet silent on the wood. His room was at the end of the hall, the door slightly ajar, and I pushed it open the rest of the way. The bed was immaculate as if no one had slept in it, and knowing Novak as I did, it wouldn’t surprise me if he slept on the floor instead or didn’t sleep at all. Two bottles of water sat on the nightstand, alongside a towel, and a pile of different lubes—small bottles, travel-sized, as if he’d brought a fuckingsampler pack—and a strip of condoms.
Novak stepped in behind me. I turned, and for the first time since I’d known him, his expression wasn’t locked down. There was something raw in the way his silver eyes tracked the pulse in my throat. His chest rose and fell once, but his fingers flexed at his sides.
I reached for him and pointed to his holster, which he unfastened, then tugged his T-shirt over his head. I followed suit, then placed my palm against his sternum, over the crosstattooed there. His skin was hot, the muscle beneath unyielding. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t breathe harder. He was waiting to see what I’d do next.
“Novak, is this?—”
“Leon,” he corrected.
“Leon. Is this what you want?” I asked him because he was unmoving right now, and as much as I wanted to bury myself into this intriguing, frustrating serial killer, I needed consent.
